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Tropical Conservation Biology

8 09 2008

An obvious personal plug – but I’m allowed to do that on my own blog ;-)

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I’d like to introduce a (relatively) new textbook that my colleagues, Navjot Sodhi and Barry Brook, and I wrote and published last year with Blackwell (now Wiley-Blackwell) Scientific Publishing – Tropical Conservation Biology.

We’re rather proud of this book because it was a timely summary and assessment of the scientific evidence for the degree of devastation facing tropical biodiversity today and in the future. I’ve summarised some of the main issues in a previous post covering a paper we have ‘in press’ that was born of the text book, but obviously the book is a far more detailed account of the problems facing the tropics.

This introductory textbook examines diminishing terrestrial and aquatic habitats in the tropics, covering a broad range of topics including the fate of the coral reefs; the impact of agriculture, urbanisation, and logging on habitat depletion; and the effects of fire on plants and animal survival.

One of the highlights of the book is that each chapter (see below) Includes case studies and interviews with prominent conservation scientists to help situate key concepts in a real world context: Norman Myers (Chapter 1), Gretchen Daily (Chapter 2), William Laurance (Chapter 3), Mark Cochrane (Chapter 4), Daniel Simberloff (Chapter 5), Bruce Campbell (Chapter 6), Daniel Pauly (Chapter 7), Stephen Schneider (Chapter 8), Stuart Pimm (Chapter 9) and Peter Raven (Chapter 10). These biographies are followed by a brief set of questions and answers that focus on some of the most pertinent and pressing issues in tropical conservation biology today. It is our intention that readers of Tropical Conservation Biology will benefit from the knowledge and be inspired by the passion of these renowned conservation experts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Diminishing habitats in regions of high biodiversity. We report on the loss of tropical habitats across the tropics (e.g., deforestation rates). We also highlight the drivers of habitat loss such as human population expansion. Finally, we identify the areas in immediate need of conservation action by elucidating the concept of biodiversity hotspots. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: biodiversity, biology, conservation, science, tropical
Categories : Africa, alien species, Asia, Australia, biodiversity, bushmeat, cattle, Central America, climate change, conservation biology, corruption, decline, deforestation, ecosystem services, environmental policy, exploitation, extinction, fisheries, fragmentation, governance, habitat loss, hotspot, human overpopulation, invasive species, poverty, protected area, South America, species-area curve, threatened species, tropical

Saving species does not harm poor

17 08 2008

Here’s a great one for the Potential list:

A paper just published online in the journal Oryx by Kent Redford and colleagues entitled What is the role for conservation organizations in poverty alleviation in the world’s wild places? challenges one argument used by anti-conservation humanists to avoid preserving intact habitats.

When rainforests and other high conservation-value habitats are set aside for protection, humanists will often complain that it destroys the livelihoods of the people living there because the listing prevents them from farming, hunting or otherwise providing themselves with income. Not so say Redford and colleagues – they found that most of the world’s poor (measured by proxy using infant mortality rates) were predominately associated with high-density urban areas and not with more intact wild areas.

Critics of the finding argue that this should not take the onus away from richer nations or governments to bolster the economic prosperity of these people, and I agree. However, this is a major finding that in some ways validates what we are beginning to understand about habitat intactness and ecosystem services. Destroy the ecosystems around you and you generally have lower water quality, higher incidence of catastrophic events, poor agricultural returns, greater disease prevalence, etc. that will drive people into poverty, rather than drop them further down the economic scale.

If this conclusion stands up to analytical scrutiny and supporting evidence from other analyses, I dearly hope that it is noticed and embraced by governments worldwide struggling to find the balance between economic development, poverty alleviation and conservation of biodiversity to maintain ecosystem services.

CJA Bradshaw